I know this is probably terrible timing, but we're going to have to do some database maintenance. Basically I'm going to download a backup, do some stuff with it, and then restore it, starting about 15 minutes from the time I post this... I don't know how long the restore will take, because it's a pretty big database and it all has to be uploaded at DSL speeds, but I suspect it'll be at least an hour, maybe two. (Doubtful it'll be any more than that.)

So, if you were about to post something, it might be a good idea to write it in a local text editor for now, so you don't lose it!

Technically I wouldn't have to take the board offline for this, but any posts made during the process would be lost, and that just seems wrong somehow.

Um, just to add a little more detail to the foregoing, it looks like the board database is hugely bloated with "spider log" entries, so much so that it apparently prevented the restore process from completing. These things make up almost 2/3rds of the whole database! Sheesh... So maybe this is all Google's fault after all...

I knew they'd be involved, somehow. As if the billions of dollars weren't enough, they just had to go and do that too.

Hmm... I've given this some additional thought (I know, how can someone with no brain do such a thing) and I think we're going to hold off on the second attempt to fix the database until tomorrow night.

As it turns out, there are two problems - the aforementioned over-bloated spider_logs table, and also an odd bit of otherwise-harmless PHP code, stored in one of the settings tables somewhere, which is causing the restore procedure to fail. So I just have to unpack the backup, fix those things, and then repack it before restoring it. It'll take a bit longer, but hopefully nobody will mind too much...

Sheez, I dunno, maybe none of this is worth it... Still, let's assume that tomorrow night (it's about 10 PM right now where I am) we'll give this another shot, and with any luck, aftre that we'll have a nice clean packed database that can handle just about any amount of traffic the world throws at it.